10 JUL. CÆS. VANINI

Nevertheless, without his knowledge and by the untimely "midwifery" of over-greedy printers, his most celebrated book was brought into the light: On the Admirable Secrets of Nature, the Queen and Goddess of Mortals. For the printer, having obtained the manuscripts which he had greedily withheld through suitable scribes, took care to have two most upright men divide it into chapters and assign a title to each book. And when this work was nearing its end, he informed Vanini of that nec manifesti not caught in the act theft, and Vanini allowed the light to be given to him without his prior knowledge.

While it was still sweating in the press, the Monks—a superstitious race who see more with the eyes of others than their own—and the Great Men snatched it to themselves and surveyed it with a fleeting eye. Having read barely a few pages, or even just the one that displays the name of the Author and the book, they condemned it as a novelty.

They were unmindful of Julian, that most praised Prince (had he not been more unjust toward the Christians), whose sentence we read proposed in three words: I read, I reread, I condemned. But, for the most part, they are so insane:

Now receive the treachery of the Greeks, and from one crime
learn them all. †

Carolus Bovillus of Noyon once condemned the Steganography of Trithemius in a similar manner.

• In the Printer's Preface, placed before the work.
  † Virgil, Aeneid, Book 2, line 65.